fly away from here
by piiussima domina
Summary: Thalia Grace hates her new baby brother.


**Title: fly away from here **

**Summary: Ten year old Thalia Grace hates her new baby brother.**

**A/N: I know that Thalia says she was seven when Jason was born, which would make her nine when she ran away, but she also said that she was twelve when she ran away (and eventually died) and Jason was two when he was kidnapped so I made him born when she was ten.**

Thalia had come home from school in a bad mood. She had punched Bobby Fielder in the face and given him a bloody nose, and she had two days of ISS and a week of lunch detentions. Her mother had to sign something from the teachers since she hadn't showed up when the school called the house.

She had come home to an empty house.

That didn't bother Thalia. She'd just sit and glare at the discipline teacher as she did her busywork later. Maybe she'd chew with her mouth open just to annoy them. Bobby Fields had deserved it. She'd told him to shut up and he hadn't listened; he'd called her mom a drunk. He said her dad had left because he didn't want to have to put up with her anymore.

And Thalia hated that it was true, so she punched him in the face. That shut him up, she reflected with grim satisfaction. It quickly faded.

Now four months since Dad had left. _It_ was now six months old, it being the baby that was currently Thalia's biggest problem; bigger then Dad and Mom, way bigger then stupid Bobby Fields and lunch detention.

Thalia wasn't an idiot. She knew Dad hadn't left because of the baby. She knew Mom hadn't started drinking again because of the baby. That wasn't why she hated him. She hated him because he was a nuisance, another problem she did not need.

Dad had given her a book on Jason of the Argo, and Thalia hadn't read it. Didn't Dad understand that she had dyslexia? Reading wasn't her thing. Her dad was always trying to get her more interested in mythology. That made Thalia even more eager to ignore it.

She had wanted the baby's name to be Christopher. She and her mother had picked it out together, and she had liked it. But Dad had come in and told them that his name was going to be Jason, because it was a name that had been in their family for years and years. (Your name is Zeus, Thalia wanted to shout. Your family's names are dumb, and you're not even really in our family. But she didn't.)

She could have loved Christopher Grace. She didn't care about Jason Grace at all.

The house was silent. Her mother was out again. She didn't care, so neither did Thalia.

The baby stirred in his blankets and opened his big blue eyes. He barely cried at all—Mom called him a perfect baby. Thalia was colicky and puked a lot when she was a baby.

She stared at him. He looked back.

There was no one around. She could barely even hear the traffic from the streets around the apartment.

"I hate you." She said venomously to the baby in the bassinet. The words sounded too quiet and unsatisfying.

He blinked at her.

"I hate you so much." Thalia continued, wracking her mind for other things to say. "I-I hope you...I hope you die! You're so stupid, and I hate you, and I wish you were never born, and I hate being your sister, and when you get older I'm going to push you down the stairs and laugh at you all the time because I hate you. I hope you never ever have friends or a girlfriend, because you'll probably just be a _jerk_ like Dad.

"You're just another problem that we _don't_ need, because Dad is a jerk and he left and I hate him too, and Mom can't take care of herself! And the last thing we need is _you_, the last thing we need is a dumb baby being born that I have to take care of, because Mom can't do anything, and it's all Dad's fault, and I bet you're _stupid_ just like him!" Thalia was shouting now. Maybe the neighbors could hear. She didn't care.

The baby looked solemnly at her for a long moment, then opened his mouth wider then she thought it could go and started crying and screaming louder then she'd ever heard a baby cry before. He sounded heartbroken.

Thunder crackled in the sky, but that didn't matter. The baby never cried at thunderstorms. For a second, the little girl felt guilty. Irrationally she wondered if the baby had understood her. Then her anger returned and she glared at the sobbing baby. "You're Mom and Dad's kid. Let one of them shut you up." She growled at him, then turned away to go to her room.

The baby's wails echoed throughout the entire apartment. Thalia groaned and lay down on her bed, placing her hands over her ears. It didn't help. The sound grated at her eardrums, unending and extremely annoying. She stood up and closed the door, which only helped a little. The sound was driving her insane. She tapped her fingers anxiously on the desk, unable to sit still. She swung her legs. She kneaded her pillow into her mattress.

The baby kept crying.

Thalia opened the door, turned her head so she wouldn't have to look at the baby, and went into the kitchen. She opened the fridge: beer, half-eaten sandwich, a baby bottle, mustard, yogurt that should probably get thrown out, cheese, an egg carton with two eggs left. The baby kept crying. She pulled out the sandwich. Then her eyes lighted on something else: a bottle of wine, unopened. It looked really fancy, the kind her mom never drank except when—

Dad had left it here before he had left. It had gotten pushed to the back of the fridge, but no one had gone shopping in a really long time and it was almost empty now.

Anger flared back up in her, intensified by the sobbing sound coming from the other room. She picked up the bottle of wine and dropped it unceremoniously onto the floor. The baby kept screaming.

Nothing happened. It clunked on the floor but didn't break.

She put the sandwich down on the counter and threw the bottle has hard as she could—it was kind of heavy. It shattered loudly on the floor. Dark colored wine splattered everywhere and then began to spread out across the floor. It looked like blood. The baby's cries didn't stop. Thalia ground her hands into fists and turned away from the mess. Let Mom clean it up if she ever came home. Maybe she should just run away. She might as well. There was nothing to keep her here.

The thought actually cheered her up a bit, imagining life with neither a mom nor a dad to bug her and be jerks and idiots and whine about their lives and tell her she had responsibilities she didn't know about. Dad had left her with a useless mom and a dumb baby. Mom couldn't even do the laundry anymore. They were both stupid. She wished she had another wine bottle to throw.

The baby kept crying, and the sound just made her want to run away even more. She could do it. Mom would be sorry when she came home and found Thalia gone—as soon as she sobered up and noticed. Whatever. She didn't care what Mom thought. She could be out of California by Christmas; she could go anywhere she wanted.

The baby cried and suddenly Thalia felt like her dad was around. She turned. He wasn't in the house. Of course he wasn't. She'd have heard him come in. You couldn't open the front door without being able to see it from the kitchen.

She still felt his bright blue eyes on her. It was a weird feeling—like she wasn't just being watched, but she was being watched by her dad in particular. The baby kept crying, and Thalia grinned spitefully.

"Happy with what you did, _Dad_?" She said out loud, grabbed her sandwich, and went into her room, slamming the door as hard as possible. A clap of thunder boomed, sounding like it was just outside the house. The sound drowned out the baby's screams momentarily. Lightning flashed so brightly Thalia could see everything in the dark house clearly, and then it was dark again.

The baby continued crying. Thalia rolled her eyes. If Dad obviously didn't care, she didn't have to either. She sat on her bed and ate her sandwich. Unfortunately, when it was gone she had nothing to do again, and her ADHD made it hard to sit still. Really hard. She had hoped she would eventually grow used to the baby crying, but it grated on her as much as ever. She kicked the bed a few times.

She was twisting the head off of a Polly Pocket from her mother when someone banged on the door. Cautiously, she stood up. She wasn't sure who it was. Sometimes her mom had weird guys who smelled funny come around, and she'd give them things like vases or necklaces. Thalia wasn't supposed to talk about it with her friends, even though she didn't really have any. Having moms who invited weird guys around could do that for you.

Thalia walked as quietly as she could into the kitchen and looked through the peephole, breathing a sigh of relief when she saw that it wasn't a weird guy who smelled bad. It was Mrs. Davis, the woman who lived in the apartment above them. Mrs. Davis never smelled funny, and she never ever threw up on the steps. She was a woman about grandmotherly age, with silver hair and flowy silk scarves.

Thalia was suddenly hyper-aware of the screaming baby in the bedroom, the smashed bottle of wine in the kitchen, and the clutter of mail and laundry scattered all over the apartment. Reluctantly, she opened the door.

"Thalia, dear!"

"Hi, Mrs. Davis."

Mrs. Davis smiled at her. "Thalia, is that your little brother crying in there? He's been crying for a long time. I came to make sure everything was okay with you guys."

Thalia nodded slowly. "He's okay."

"Is the thunderstorm upsetting him?" Mrs. Davis said, looking concerned. "Is your mother home?"

"Thunderstorms don't scare him." Thalia avoided the other question, which was probably answer enough. Mrs. Davis looked like she wanted to come in, but suddenly Thalia just wanted her to go away so no one could see her messy apartment, screaming baby, mom who was never home and dad who had left. She half shut the door. "I should go get back to him now. Thanks for checking in."

Mrs. Davis looked uncomfortable. "I'd feel better knowing everything was okay with you and your brother. Jacob, his name is, right?"

"Yeah." Thalia lied quietly. "We're fine, actually. We're okay. Um, goodnight." With that, she shut the door in Mrs. Davis' face.

Fifteen minutes later, Thalia had brushed her teeth, changed into her pajamas, and lay in bed, trying to go to sleep. Her mom wasn't there to tell her to do it, but Thalia had gotten used to putting herself to bed.

The baby was still crying. His sobs were softer, but no less miserable, like he was getting tired but wanted to keep going. Now that she listened, it sounded like his throat was getting scratchy.

She told herself she didn't care. The storm still hadn't stopped: thunder still roared and lightning flashed constantly. The baby kept crying.

Suddenly, with a flash and a the loudest clap of thunder yet, Thalia's lamp turned off. She flicked the lights a few times and realized the power was gone. The baby cried with renewed vigor. Thalia went back to bed, but she couldn't sleep. After ten minutes of trying and failing miserably, she sat up.

Carefully, as if she was trying to hide it from some unknown person in the empty house, she swung her feet over the side of the bed and opened the door. It was really dark. She wasn't afraid of the dark but she felt uneasy anyway. She opened the door to the baby's room.

It was dim but not too dark; the light from the nighttime city spilled into the room. Thalia crept up to the bassinet and peered inside. The baby's eyes were screwed shut, and he wailed and drooled all over his purple onesie.

"Hi." She whispered hesitantly to the baby. He ignored her. Cautiously, she poked him in the stomach. His cries quieted as he looked up at her, but they didn't stop.

Thalia had never held a baby before, but she figured there was no time like the present. Avoiding the drool, she hefted the six month old into her arms.

The baby—Jason—slowly stopped crying and looked up at her as if he was confused. She smiled in spite of herself.

"I still don't like you. You're still dumb." She said, but maybe she sounded a little too fond. Then she shrugged a little. Okay, he was a little cute.

Thalia's dad was also Jason's. He had left Jason just as much as he had Thalia and her mom. Sure, Dad was a jerk and he had left. Sure, Mom was never home and she never did anything around the house. Sure, Thalia probably would have to do a lot of taking care of Jason herself.

But whatever. She didn't need Dad, and she didn't need Mom. "Let's see if we can get you anything from the fridge. Heck knows Mom won't." She murmured to the blond baby, who looked up solemnly.

They'd never need anyone else.

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**i know Thalia sounds pretty juvenile in this, but...she is twelve. :) thanks for reading! **


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